


you pick the century and i'll pick the spot

by malicegeres



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Cold Weather, Cold-Blooded Crowley (Good Omens), Established Relationship, Fluff, Huddling For Warmth, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-11 16:00:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20548829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malicegeres/pseuds/malicegeres
Summary: Crowley is ill-adapted to London's climate, and when some cold weather sneaks up on him Aziraphale has to come to his rescue. Again.





	you pick the century and i'll pick the spot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mercuryhatter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercuryhatter/gifts).

> Happy belated birthday and very very belated fic prompt, Simon!

Crowley wasn’t one to get attached to cities. He’d certainly had his favorites over the millennia—Ancient Rome and Weimar Berlin in particular came to mind—but the demon had been flying all over the region of the world Hell had assigned as his station since long before human technology had caught up. He had flats in Paris, Milan, Moscow, Copenhagen. The last few centuries had even taken him to other parts of the globe as the world shrank, particularly Asia and America. Things changed so quickly that there was always something new for him to see, and the ability to speak every human language fluently made it even easier to do it. The way Crowley saw it, there was no reason to put down roots in one place.

But he kept coming back to London. It wasn’t out of any sort of romantic attachment to the city itself. In Crowley’s estimation, when one was tired of London, one had finally seen that shelling out a thousand pounds a month for a tiny flat and the chance to spend an hour every day crammed into a metal tube like a sardine wasn’t worth the money you made there. If anything, _that_ was probably why he stayed. It was a city that was always growing, its new people presenting new problems to which Crowley could provide miserable solutions such as the M25 or rail replacement busses. London had been the center of an empire until recently, which meant he could spread evil far and wide as all the businesspeople and politicians in the City continued levying their old influences around the world. As for the nasty commutes and tiny flats, he’d found his way around those ages ago. It was a terribly convenient place for a demon to live.

Or, at least, it should have been. It would have been alright for most demons, but most demons had the option to internally regulate their own body heat. The humans hadn’t quite got it right when they wrote about God cursing the Serpent in Genesis, but he had been cursed. Aspects of his serpent form grafted themselves onto all his other forms, and that caused a number of logistical issues when it came to living in a climate like England’s.

Based on the differences he’d observed between his favorite shape, his serpent form, and the way actual humans generally functioned, Crowley had long ago come to the conclusion that the approximation of humanity he attempted day to day was an affront to God in the figurative sense as well as the obvious literal. It had all sorts of natural mammalian processes that clashed with the somewhat more logical snake instincts his body instilled in him to try to keep him from freezing to death, and he didn't know how to turn them off.

For example, his circulatory system reacted to cold the way a warm-blooded creature's might, leaving his fingers and toes aching and numb all at once as his cold blood rushed to his organs in a futile attempt to warm them. He also tended to shiver, which was a nonsensical thing to do and which had on a few occasions put him in danger of discorporating when he went into brumation. The point of brumating, after all, was to conserve energy until it was warm enough to expend it again on things like hunting, digesting, fighting disease, or healing injuries. Shivering took energy, and it just made him take longer to snap out of it.

Not that brumation was a terribly helpful reaction for an immortal demon to have to the cold, either, but helpfulness wasn’t really the point of a Heavenly punishment for his part in Original Sin.

The good news was, Crowley wasn't technically a reptile in his human-like form, either. He had human hair and skin, he smelled things with his nose, and his mind was definitely developed beyond a simple lizard brain. He was cold-blooded, yes, but he understood about tool use. And Crowley had been rigging up ways to keep himself out of brumation in wintertime for thousands of years. It was something he'd always taken pride in, actually, all the clever things he did to keep warm. He’d had coats he lined with hot coals, routes that took him from tavern to tavern, one infernal horse he’d managed to get on with who he rode as fast as he could down the roads so he had an excuse to hold himself low to her hellishly hot neck. He made a sort of game of it, which distracted him from how bloody irritating it was that it was necessary at all.

His current method of choice was to drive everywhere when the weather cooled, but, as his shivering body and swimming head were reminding him now, that wasn’t always foolproof.

It was a beautiful day in late September, with crisp autumn air and sunlight glistening off of the changing leaves in Hyde Park. Dogs were playing catch, children were shrieking happily as they jumped into piles of leaves, and Crowley had no idea where he was. He might have been stumbling around delirious for five minutes, and it might have been several hours.

The part of him that had some idea what was going on was furious with himself. He was normally good at catching the early symptoms: lack of appetite, sluggishness, sleeping like he really needed it. He'd had an exceptionally busy week of temptations with the new e-scooter program he was trying to get through City Hall. The city assemblywoman he'd been having lunch with at a restaurant along the Serpentine had insisted on eating outside, and he'd been too focused on pleasing her to even think of his own health until he had to leave in the middle of the meeting when he realized what was happening to him.

The bulk of his brainpower was dedicated to finding a warm, dark hole to crawl into until he could thaw enough to move, although the more intelligent part of him was hard at work translating 'any dark hole' into 'out of the park and indoors.' Trouble was, he wasn’t certain how to find 'out of the park,' let alone 'indoors.'

London has some of the most green space per square mile of any major city in the world, and Hyde Park is one of its crown jewels. Its area clocks in at three hundred and fifty acres, and that land is intercut by a web of paths that cut around trees, playgrounds, buildings, gardens, an entire palace, and more. Most of these webbed paths are straight lines leading into one another, so if one is disoriented with little idea of where one is in a park that massive, it can be very difficult to simply pick a path and follow it to the park’s perimeter to hail a cab.

After yet another attempt to escape took Crowley in a circle, he started to panic. On the upshot, the whole reason he was so disoriented in the first place was that his body was slowing his heartbeat and breathing substantially, so instead of descending into a full-blown panic attack he was suddenly hit with the presence of mind to find a nice tree, sit down, and pull out his mobile phone.

* * *

Aziraphale was beginning to panic. He'd done everything in his power short of tapping into his _actual_ power to get the woman to relinquish her grip on the book—a perfectly-preserved first edition of E.M. Forster's _A Room with a View_—but she had a power even greater than his own: she was a talker. His customer droned on and on about the weather, her book, how much her husband was going to love the book, how she loved making expensive impulse purchases for other people such as this book, and wasn't she terribly lucky to be able to do it because of her husband's business she kept droning on about?

He was halfway to opening the register to take the wad of cash she was _somehow_ carrying on her person for said impulse purchase when he heard a Nokia standard ringtone blaring from his back pocket.

"Excuse me," he said triumphantly, pulling out his mobile phone and putting it to his ear without bothering to check caller ID. "A.Z. Fell speaking," he sing-songed.

"'Ss-sssss-sssssziraphale," hissed a faint voice on the other line.

Aziraphale's face fell. "Crowley? Are you quite alright, my dear?"

"Nuh," he replied. "Sss-sssss'cold."

Ah. He supposed it was that time of year, however light a jacket he'd worn out to breakfast that very morning. He'd always known Crowley was sensitive to the cold, but he never understood the full extent of his condition until after Armageddon didn't happen.

That was when they'd set old tensions aside to live out their true feelings for one another, which was wonderful, but it meant that Crowley finally felt safe enough to admit he had a problem he could use Aziraphale's help with from time to time. It didn't do revealing a weak spot like that to the enemy, after all, even a friendly one. But things had changed. Now it would be ridiculous for Crowley to continue looking to passersby and cab drivers to get him home safely when the weather turned when he had a partner who was perfectly capable of helping him.

It was sweet, he supposed, Crowley trusting him like that. And it wasn’t as though the poor thing _liked_ putting his life on hold to recover from temperatures everyone around him—including Aziraphale—considered mild and comfortable. Somebody as image-conscious as Crowley probably didn’t derive much pleasure from nearly freezing to death in what was undoubtedly a public place, either. But now Aziraphale knew how often it happened, and Crowley could afford to be less careful because he could rely on Aziraphale to come when he called, so when it did he couldn’t help feeling frustrated that this now happened at least once a year when the weather got cold and Crowley got a little too sucked into his work. He sighed. "Where are you?"

"Dunno," the demon slurred.

"_You don't know?_"

"Look, I'm... Uh... P-p-park. Hyde Park."

"Are you lost?" he asked slowly.

"Yeah."

"Alright. Could you give me a description of where you are? Any landmarks?"

"There'sssss, er, trees. M'leaning on one. Lot of 'em."

"Anything else?" asked Aziraphale, trying not to let Crowley hear the strain in his patience.

"Angel, I can't— S'all blurry, alright?" Crowley protested. He sounded frustrated, with himself or a Aziraphale the angel couldn't tell, but more than that he sounded frightened. "I can't find the road."

Aziraphale softened a little. "That's alright," he said gently. "I can find you. Just stay where you are, darling, alright?" He glanced at his customer and felt the last of his irritation melt away. "I'm leaving _right now_," he added pointedly.

The woman set the book down on the counter with a sympathetic grimace and left the shop in blessed silence.

Forty-five minutes later, Aziraphale was cradling a sleeping Crowley's head against his chest as their cab pulled up to the shop. The weight of him was comforting, and he was rather enjoying the sensation of stroking his silky hair as he slept, but his wallet was in the pocket Crowley was currently blocking off so he had to push him off to pay the driver.

The motion woke Crowley, whose sunglasses were askew. Aziraphale reached over and set them right so that the driver wouldn't see his eyes, and then he thanked him and helped Crowley out onto the pavement. He'd warmed up enough sleeping against Aziraphale that he didn't have to be dragged along the ground the way he had in the park, but he leaned heavily against him as they walked through the door.

There was never a question that they'd be going back to Aziraphale's. Crowley was too attached to his lifestyle to give up his flat entirely, but when he was unwell or upset he always preferred the cozy confines of Aziraphale's backroom and upstairs flat to the austere rooms he kept in Mayfair.

Crowley started tugging Aziraphale toward the sofa, but Aziraphale held him fast. "My dear," he said, "there won't be room enough for both of us down here. If you'd like me to lie down with you, you've got to go upstairs."

He let out a long groan like a child who'd just been told to brush his teeth before bed. "M’fine here,” he said, inclining his head toward the beckoning cushions.

“Yes, but we can’t both fit comfortably on there and a blanket won’t do you and good without me under it with you.”

Crowley sighed. “I hate when you’re right.”

Aziraphale smiled. “And I love when you’re big enough to admit it.” He leaned in and kissed Crowley’s forehead.

“Prick,” he muttered, but he was smiling and didn’t put up a fight as Aziraphale led him up the stairs.

The first time Aziraphale had helped Crowley out with his—what was it called, bruminating? Brooding? Whatever it was called, Aziraphale hadn’t quite known what to do with it and Crowley had expended a lot more time and energy trying to articulate to Aziraphale what he needed than he’d probably wanted to. He’d also requested a warm bath, then, because that was how he treated his condition when he was alone.

He always let Crowley wait on the bed while he drew a bath, but one rainy winters day he was particularly reluctant to get up and Aziraphale had got under the covers with him, and they both discovered that, while sharing Aziraphale’s body heat wasn’t the quickest way to snap Crowley out of his condition, it was a lot more pleasant for both of them than the demon drifting in and out of sleep in a bathtub while Aziraphale hovered nearby.

So he folded Crowley’s jacket neatly over the chair in the corner of the room, tucked both their shoes under the bed, and curled around him under the blankets. Crowley was lying on his side, clinging to Aziraphale in an attempt to get as much physical contact with him as he could. Aziraphale pulled him against his chest and nudged his legs with his sock-covered foot, entwining them so that Crowley could lie more flat against him. Crowley let out an easy breath, burying his face in Aziraphale’s chest.

“Better?” asked Aziraphale.

“Mmph,” replied a contented Crowley.

He took one of his hands and winced when he saw how white the beds of Crowley's nails were from the cold. "Does that hurt?"

Crowley grunted vaguely. "A bit."

“Are you going to sleep?”

He shook his head without looking up. “M’not tired, jussst…” He lifted a hand and waved it vaguely, forehead still glued to Aziraphale’s sternum. “You know.”

Aziraphale swallowed. He truly didn’t know, because as an angel he didn’t share many of Crowley’s vulnerabilities. His corporeal body could die, of course, and he knew what it felt like to exhaust himself when he overextended his power, but he was seldom helpless against physical forces.

He’d loved a number of humans who’d gone through worse, but Crowley was supposed to be like him. Obviously his sensitivity to the cold was a unique issue, but it brought to mind the more deadly risks to any demon’s safety, things like holy water and blessed flames that could snuff him out forever. There were so many things he’d realized he wasn’t certain were God’s will since the Apocalypse-That-Wasn’t, but one of the few things he could be certain God intended was Crowley’s damnation and his double-cursedness for his part in the Fall of Humankind. It left a cold, dense feeling in the pit of his stomach, because in his heart Aziraphale didn’t believe Crowley deserved to be so easy to harm. And if God had punished somebody undeserving, that rather knocked out a load-bearing wall in the house of cards that was Aziraphale’s view of the world. It was something he tried not to think about, and Crowley being unwell made that difficult.

“Sssstop that.”

Aziraphale’s attention snapped back to the bed and the being in his arms. “Stop what?”

“You’ve gone all quiet. You’re worrying.”

“Because you keep giving me cause to worry,” Aziraphale scolded. “You’ve got to be more careful when the weather turns.”

“I know,” Crowley sighed. “I was busy, didn’t realize it had changed.”

“But surely you felt uncomfortable.”

“M’cold-blooded an’ I live in England.” He shifted his hips slightly and settled into a more relaxed position. “M’always uncomfortable.”

He frowned. “Are you really?” he asked. It did make sense, but until that moment he never considered that it might be the case.

Crowley sighed and pushed himself back so that he could squint into Aziraphale’s eyes. “I mean, yeah. S'fine, m'just cold a lot is all."

"And this happens," said Aziraphale sternly.

"Sssssometimes," Crowley relented. "Look, s'alright. I mean, I've never died from it or anything, right? That's the whole point. When real snakes do this, if they die it's because they're hungry or sick. That doesn't happen to me."

Aziraphale cast his eyes skyward. "Yes, Crowley," he said slowly, "but there are degrees of escalation between 'fine' and 'dying.' Why on earth have you lived in a climate like this all these years if it was detrimental to your health?"

"Well, I wasn't going to make you move," he muttered.

"Crowley."

"What?"

"You didn't move here for me, did you?"

Crowley pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Maybe. Sort of. Not like you're thinking, I don't think." He leaned back and seemed to experiment with propping his head up on his elbow before flopping back onto the pillow and awkwardly slipping his arm above where Aziraphale's head lay. "You've built a nice life for yourself here, right? You've always been good at finding weird little shops and restaurants worth exploring, collecting nice things, gathering interesting people. I mean, between Will and Kit and all and your aesthetes alone, you've done pretty extraordinarily for yourself over the years. M'not as good at that as you are. I'll find a person or two here or there, but I'm always on the move. You're good at settling in and building a whole life around yourself." He smiled. "And you've always been good at leaving a space in all of it for me to come back to. M'not about to let a little weather keep me from that."

"Oh," said Aziraphale. He turned what Crowley had said over in his mind, and then he said, "You know, it's been an awfully long time since I've left this part of the world, myself. Why don't we go somewhere?"

He snorted. "Thinking of buying a timeshare in the South of France, are you?"

"No, I think that would be rather dull." He gave Crowley a conspiratorial smile. "I just thought it might be time you made a little space in your life for me, as well."

"Nah," said Crowley, "those are business trips. But I hear Marrakesh is nice this time of year."

Aziraphale's eyes widened. "Marrakesh?" he repeated. His head swum with images of rare books bound in Moroccan leather, and he kissed Crowley.

He kissed him back, laughing into his mouth. "Alright, so it's a business trip for your _other_ job."

"And when we get back," said Aziraphale, "no more of this. We have an Arrangement for a reason. If you're going to be busy when the weather might turn, I want to know about it."

"Yeah, but then we wouldn't get to do this," said Crowley with a lazy grin.

Aziraphale glowered at him.

"Fine, fine," said Crowley. He curled in tighter and settled his head back against Aziraphale's chest. "Thanks for looking out for me, angel."

Aziraphale kissed his forehead. "It's my pleasure, my dear."

Crowley drifted off again soon after, as he tended to do when he was comfortable enough. By the next morning he was back to his usual self, and after a brief phone call apologizing to the assemblywoman whose lunch he'd cut short they spent the afternoon basking in the warmth of hot tea, good company, and the prospect of something exciting on the horizon.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from "Boat Drinks" by Jimmy Buffett because I can do whatever the hell I want.


End file.
